Sunday, October 30, 2011

It’s Always Been a Class War | Firedoglake: "Whenever conservatives get caught with their hands in the till they shout, “Class Warfare!” at those of us who would like to stop their looting. Thinking this a negative, they forget, I guess, that the American democratic experiment was and is just that: a class war..."

"...The source of the ardor is no mystery: Warren’s unapologetic populism and her fervent belief that corporations should be held to account for the economic collapse. Part Pat Moynihan, part Erin Brockovich, she has revived the energy of the left in a way no other Democrat has, including President Obama.

“We live in an America that has hammered, chipped and squeezed the middle class,” she told a crowd in Newton, Mass., while the government “has said to large corporations that you don’t have to pay anything in taxes...”

"A controversial law sharply curtailing collective-bargaining rights for Ohio’s public employees is sinking in the polls, raising Democratic hopes that the measure’s defeat could boost their prospects in the crucial swing state in 2012.

The law’s diminishing poll numbers have coincided with a decline in the approval ratings of Republican Gov. John R. Kasich, the measure’s most visible proponent. The drop is coming as the law’s union-led opponents have waged an energetic campaign against a measure that they say represents an overreach by the state’s Republican political leaders..."

'...A "zombie bank" is as "a bank or financial institution with negative net worth," according to Investopedia. And yet, "they continue to operate as a result of government backings or bailouts that allow these banks to meet debt obligations and avoid bankruptcy. Zombie banks often have a large amount of nonperforming assets on their balance sheets, which make future earnings very unpredictable."

"The large banks which dominate most of the lending in the United States are effectively zombie banks," well-known banking analyst Meredith Whitney said this summer. "You've got an expense structure that just doesn't match the revenue structure. So it's a classic issue of negative operating leverage. You don't buy institutions that have negative operating leverage..."'

Thursday, October 27, 2011

Meeting Violence with Nonviolence: Why the Occupy Movement Will Succeed | Truthout: '...The crackdown on Occupy movements by mayors and police forces around the country means only one thing: its getting somewhere. The powers that be—and the mayors who represent them—want this movement to go away. And they will not hesitate, as we’ve witnessed, to use violence, arrests, and likely imprisonment, if it gets to that, to make that happen. For the Occupy movement to succeed in making the substantial, lasting change needed, it will need to establish the kind of permanent space it envisions so that the teach-ins, community building, organizing, action-planning and General Assemblies flourish. Meet violence with nonviolence. Respond to police action and arrests with more civil disobedience and vigorous protest via the courts, petitions, sit-ins, and/or walk-outs. As the mainstream media tries to demonize the movement, do more outreach to labor, universities, churches and the ordinary citizens you now represent. As Frederick Douglass said, “Power concedes nothing without a struggle. It never has and it never will.” And then finally – after that struggle – Occupy Wall Street will succeed.'

Kissing the whip simply means defending the system and people who are robbing you blind. Unfortunately, there are more than a few people quite willing to defend their pending enslavement. I know a few and they are stubborn and they wear moral blinders that allow no shades of gray to penetrate their political ultravision since that would require thought and not just simple recognition. Actor212 puts it this way:

"... Why are you working three jobs just to keep up? Why wouldn't you rather work one job at a living wage and have more time to enjoy the finer things that wage provides.

Finer things, like kids, and family time, instead of rushing off to job number two or three.

Why are you angry at the people who have it even worse than you? Why aren't you angry at the people who have sucked up every spare bit of money lying around like a vaccuum cleaner and stuck it in their pockets, rather than provide a decent wage that allows you to work to live, not live to work?

Wednesday, October 26, 2011

Precariat- Learn this word « The Confluence: "...It’s a portmanteau of “precarious” and “proletariat”. A precariat is a person who doesn’t have a reliable job. Precariats initially were service workers who may have been working a 40 hour work week, but maybe not. A precariat could be called in to work a 6 hour shift, every other day and one long 12 hour day at some other point in the week or come to work expecting a full 8 hours but sent home after 2. The amount of work can vary from day to day, week to week. This worker typically has no benefits..."

I think the worse, or at least the longest, abuse of precariats occurs in higher ed where tens of thousands of faculty are employed "part-time" with virtually no job protection or recourse. These abuses have been going for at least fifty years. Yet the situation only grows worse.

Monday, October 24, 2011

The Senate Moves to Subsidize Homes for the Rich - Daniel Indiviglio - Business - The Atlantic: "Anyone who hoped that we would begin to see how the mortgage market might function with a tiny bit less government support should be pretty disappointed today. The Senate approved a measure that would reinstate the high-cost mortgage limits that expired on September 30th. The move seeks to ensure that relatively affluent Americans will get slightly cheaper mortgages, while keeping the training wheels on the housing finance market..."

Saturday, October 22, 2011

'Wayne Schissler walked the four blocks from his workplace to the small Occupy Allentown protest to show the young demonstrators that a tea party member is not a monster. What he learned after a few hours of talk surprised him.

“They didn’t stink, and they weren’t on drugs,” he said. “I could see me being them, 30 years ago...”'

Friday, October 21, 2011

"Let them eat Cake," the 1% does not yet feel the revolution. Yet violence should not be tolerated. The violence brought forth by the police will prove to be their demise. One thing I am doing as a small business owner, to show support for the OWS movement, and bring the message directly to consumers, is refusing to accept CC or Debit cards under the amount of 99 dollars. Banks will feel something, if everyone removes enough cash to shop, thus not rewarding the banks, through paying fees with every transaction. The banks are looking at charging the people fees for debit card use. Well small business pays fees with every swipe of the card. It'll cost the banks millions in a short time, if customers and businesses stop paying fees to use their own money."

"The “Occupy Wall Street” protesters — also known as the “99 percent” — have struck a chord with at least a few members of an unexpected audience: America’s rich and privileged.

United under the banner “We are the 1 percent: We stand with the 99 percent,” a band of entrepreneurs, trust fund babies, professionals and inheritors has taken to the web to share their abhorrence of corporate greed and support for tax code changes that would see them pay a higher share of their considerable wealth..."

Herman Cain: Dial 9-9-9 for nonsense | The Economist: "...That the 9-9-9 plan would cut taxes on the rich while raising them on the poor led Bruce Bartlett to call the proposal "a distributional monstrosity", a phrase you could imagine Barack Obama using to good effect in a general election. Why would you propose to raise taxes on the poor, making yourself vulnerable to charges of monstrous callousness, when, as the NR editors note, your ultimate plan would only cut them later? Well, you wouldn't, if you knew what you were doing. It requires only superficial examination to see that Mr Cain's 9-9-9/Fair Tax scheme is more an ill-considered, hand-waving improvisation than a serious plan from a serious policymaker. He's winging it, which I supposed makes it all the more impressive that he's been able to wing it all the way to preeminence in a few polls. But now he's made himself a target, and an easy one at that, so I doubt Mr Cain will wing it all the way to the nomination..."

A long, steep drop for Americans' standard of living - CSMonitor.com: "... Bottom line: The average individual now has $1,315 less in disposable income than he or she did three years ago at the onset of the Great Recession – even though the recession ended, technically speaking, in mid-2009. That means less money to spend at the spa or the movies, less for vacations, new carpeting for the house, or dinner at a restaurant..."

OccupyWallStreet: Nucleation and crystallization « The Confluence: "... By they way, Graeber is overlooking the strength of this movement if he thinks it is centered on young people. The reason it has become so incredibly successful is that when there is a big march, it is the regular working stiffs who show up to them. If it were just students, the media would have an easier time writing them off. But it’s not just students. It’s union people and unemployed people and teachers and actresses, and chemists and older people and families with kids. The 99% percent really means just about everyone. It doesn’t mean “all 99%-ers are equal but some 99%-ers who are young with student loans are more equal than others”. Some of us have mortgages and no jobs. We count..."

The GOP Wins by Bruising - WSJ.com: "...But in the end, Tuesday night's debate was a real plus for the GOP. All the Republican debates have been, because they've made the Republicans look like the alive party. There's been jousting and predictable disagreement, but there has also been substance. Often this is thanks to Ron Paul, who had the wit and depth the other night to score Herman Cain for not seeing that the unemployed are the victims of bad policy, not the perpetrators..."

Huntsman Praises ‘More Sweeping’ Financial Sector Regulation | Swampland | TIME.com: "...So, how does Huntsman propose to deal with Too Big to Fail? He presents a menu of options, including two big policies from across the pond: The UK’s plan to segregate commercial deposit banking from investment banking–it’s known there as “ring-fencing” but is frequently referred to by the name of the now defunct Glass-Steagall Act in the U.S.–and Switzerland’s strict capital requirements, which are not so unlike the ones that saved Canada’s bacon in ’08. While re-instating Glass-Steagall is probably not the regulatory panacea some claim it to be, it’s quite popular in some political circles. For instance, it’s item #1 on many Occupy Wall Streeters’ list of demands, and it has long-standing appeal on the fringes. (Think Paulites and Larouchies.)..."

Why Do Americans Care So Much Less About Captured Troops Than Israelis? - Yochi J. Dreazen - International - The Atlantic: "In the years since their capture in Afghanistan and Iraq, U.S. Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl and Army Staff Sgt. Ahmed Altaie have been largely forgotten by both Washington and the American public. There have been no protests demanding the government make whatever concessions necessary to win their release. Most Americans don't even know their names. The situation in Israel, one of America's closest allies, could not be more different. The Jewish state held a national celebration on Tuesday following the safe return of Gilad Shalit, a young soldier freed in exchange for the release of more than 1,000 Palestinian prisoners. Shalit had become a household name in Israel, where pop stars composed songs honoring Shalit and hundreds of thousands of Israelis regularly demonstrated to pressure the government to strike a deal with his captors..."

Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Did I see this coming? « The Confluence: "... I’m a child of the 60′s and 70′s. Back when I was a kid, most mothers didn’t work. Almost everyone we knew lived on one salary. My dad was career military and although the work was steady back then, we weren’t exactly rich. We moved frequently but always lived in nice lower middle class neighborhoods in townhouses and 3 bedroom ranches. My family benefitted from socialized medicine. Navy doctors saved my asthmatic sister’s life on more than one occasion. In the summer, we went to day camp on the Navy base or to the all day activities at Bandini Street school in San Pedro. You didn’t need to sign up or pay anything. You just walked over to the school and dropped in without your parents and learned arts and crafts or competed in Chinese handball tournaments..."

Monday, October 17, 2011

Wall Street Loses Its Immunity - NYTimes.com: " As the Occupy Wall Street movement continues to grow, the response from the movement’s targets has gradually changed: contemptuous dismissal has been replaced by whining. (A reader of my blog suggests that we start calling our ruling class the “kvetchocracy.”) The modern lords of finance look at the protesters and ask, Don’t they understand what we’ve done for the U.S. economy? ..."

"President Obama "has suffered the most unrelentingly negative treatment" of all presidential candidates over the past five months, according to a study released Monday from the Pew Research Center's Project for Excellence in Journalism.

Pew found that Mr. Obama was the subject of negative assessments nearly four times as often as he was the subject of positive assessments. It found he received "positive" coverage nine percent of the time, "neutral" coverage 57 percent of the time and "negative" coverage 34 percent of the time..."

Sunday, October 16, 2011

(My bold). Long ties to Koch brothers key to Cain’s campaign - The Washington Post: "Republican presidential hopeful Herman Cain has cast himself as the outsider, the pizza magnate with real-world experience who will bring fresh ideas to the nation’s capital. But Cain’s economic ideas, support and organization have close ties to two billionaire brothers who bankroll right-leaning causes through their group Americans for Prosperity..." Yep. The Koch boys.

Saturday, October 15, 2011

The 1930s Sure Sound Familiar - NYTimes.com: "...Allen makes the surprising point that, while small business suffered terribly during the Great Depression, big corporations did well. When large companies needed to lay off workers to maintain profitability, they did so ruthlessly. Bursts of economic growth, however, were rarely accompanied by an increase in employment. Why? Because new technology allowed companies to increase productivity at the expense of workers. Just like today..."

Friday, October 14, 2011

"... But before we get to the point where we decide who gets to stay and who has to go, there has to be a mechanism in place that will ensure the integrity of the voting process. Because, as we have seen recently, the rulemakers are very intent on preventing the wrong kind of people from voting. Then there is the problem of voting machines. They are very easy to hack and most states do not require a paper trail.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

This article goes a long way in explaining the disconnect between the 1%ers and the rest of us. The author thoroughly admires Steve Jobs' fascist tendencies and thinks all successful people must emulate the evil Apple Empire. Steve Jobs Was A Jerk. Good For Him. - Forbes: ...'“Inside Apple,” Tate continues, “there is a culture of fear and control around communication: Apple’s “Worldwide Loyalty Team” specializes in hunting down leakers, confiscating mobile phones and searching computers. In the creepiest example of Apple’s fascist tendencies, two of Apple’s private security agents searched the home of a San Francisco man and threatened him and his family with immigration trouble as part of a scramble for a missing iPhone prototype.” Wow, the Apple Gestapo. I love that too...'

Chris Hedges: Why the Elites Are in Trouble - Chris Hedges' Columns - Truthdig: "... The lords of finance in the looming towers surrounding the park, who toy with money and lives, who make the political class, the press and the judiciary jump at their demands, who destroy the ecosystem for profit and drain the U.S. Treasury to gamble and speculate, took little notice of Ketchup or any of the other scruffy activists on the street below them. The elites consider everyone outside their sphere marginal or invisible. And what significance could an artist who paid her bills by working as a waitress have for the powerful? What could she and the others in Zuccotti Park do to them? What threat can the weak pose to the strong? Those who worship money believe their buckets of cash, like the $4.6 million JPMorgan Chase gave* to the New York City Police Foundation, can buy them perpetual power and security. Masters all, kneeling before the idols of the marketplace, blinded by their self-importance, impervious to human suffering, bloated from unchecked greed and privilege, they were about to be taught a lesson in the folly of hubris. .."

Wonder how much timehe would have gotten if his name was lily-white John Smith? Still,it is a small victory for the good guys. Rajaratnam Gets Longest Insider Sentence - WSJ.com: "Raj Rajaratnam's remarkable journey from Sri Lanka to the heights of the hedge-fund world to felon ended Thursday when he was sentenced to 11 years in prison, the longest-ever term imposed in an insider-trading case..."

You'd think that by now any Republican tax plan would be greeted with howls of laughter but apparently PT Barnum's gene pool is still gurgling in the shallow end of humanity. The Flat Tax Scam, and that's what it is, sounds good on paper, but, just like Communism, comes unglued in the real world. The problem is-- no matter what the percentage-- the rich never pay what they're supposed to for their high end purchases.

The Flat Tax Scam is a sales tax, and I've had some recent experience with how this scam works. The blessed bureaucrats in Raleigh forgot to put in the decimal points on a recent boat purchase of mine. Instead of a $22k brim boat, they thought I had bought a $2.2 million yacht. I get a tax bill for around $1,700. When I explained their mistake, I got an adjusted bill for about $650. (I had to pay penalties and fines nearly equal to the tax bill for following the State's directions on filing, but that's another story.) It doesn't take a rocket scientist to figure who's getting screwed here: 650 on 22 thousand or 1700 on 2.2 million.

And so it goes, and North Carolina is not even the worse state when it comes to this disparity.

If Cain's plan happened, here's what would follow shortly after the middle class has been completely wiped out by this tax-- high end purchases would have their taxes capped-- exactly like they do now. Because if you charge $200k on the sale of that $20 million boat, plane, train, industrial machine, diamond necklace, antique gun, lost Monet, country estate or whatever, you'll be depressing sales of that item and costing people jobs and hurting the job creators without whose tireless efforts on our behalf, none of us sniveling groundlings would have a job or a hovel.

This can be explained to 99% of the people. Show them the con and they'll run from it, though they may keep yelling about Mom, apple pie and tea bags in order to keep up appearances with their peeps. Drive this into everyone's head: the 999 plan benefits 1%, not 100%, of the people.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

Could An Unmarried Woman Sink Obama? | Fox News: "... The liberal research, polling and strategy firm Greenberg Quinlan Rosner (GQR) found after the 2008 election that, "If not for the overwhelming support of unmarried women, John McCain would have won the women's vote and with it, the White House." Unmarried women voted for Barack Obama over Sen. John McCain, 70 percent to 29 percent—and cast 23 percent of all votes in that election..."

Monday, October 10, 2011

"...Consider first how Republican politicians have portrayed the modest-sized if growing demonstrations, which have involved some confrontations with the police — confrontations that seem to have involved a lot of police overreaction — but nothing one could call a riot. And there has in fact been nothing so far to match the behavior of Tea Party crowds in the summer of 2009.

Nonetheless, Eric Cantor, the House majority leader, has denounced “mobs” and “the pitting of Americans against Americans.” The G.O.P. presidential candidates have weighed in, with Mitt Romney accusing the protesters of waging “class warfare,” while Herman Cain calls them “anti-American.” My favorite, however, is Senator Rand Paul, who for some reason worries that the protesters will start seizing iPads, because they believe rich people don’t deserve to have them...

"...The way to understand all of this is to realize that it’s part of a
broader syndrome, in which wealthy Americans who benefit hugely from a
system rigged in their favor react with hysteria to anyone who points
out just how rigged the system is..." (My bold.)

Sunday, October 09, 2011

Jesse LaGreca does it again « The Confluence: "...But the worst thing DailyKos did was watch 18,000,000 voters get disenfranchised by their own party and cheer that process on. There is no greater offense that one group of citizens can do to another than to deprive them of their right to be heard and their votes to be taken seriously. It was shameful and disgusting behavior based on the premise that the ends justified the means. Well, congratulations for getting it so stupendously wrong, Markos. Millions of unemployed people around the country can thank you for making their struggle to remain in the middle class that much harder and their opportunity to have their votes counted increasingly obstructed. After all, if a progressive site like DailyKos says nothing, why can’t Ohio or Indiana or Alabama do what they want with their voters?..."

Thursday, October 06, 2011

"... Force the president to fire Tim Geithner. Force Obama to do one major thing that he clearly does not want to do. Afterwards, both he and all other politicians will take the protesters ultra-seriously.

Oh...I forgot to mention the sixth reason to demand the canning of Timmy: He's awful.

"The media keeps telling us that this is a student movement and there are nothing but young people at OccupyWallStreet. This is a lie.

There are people of all ages there and a LOT more people who are middle aged than you would expect. It is a gross mischaracterization to say that this a youth movement. That’s because so many of us are unemployed that we have time to go to marches and rallies. If the people who are running this country don’t want more marches, they really need to make a more concerted effort to get people back to work. On the other hand, occupation sites might be a good place to network. It gets people out of the house and out of their heads. Plus, if there’s decent bandwidth, you can check your email for job posting updates and rejection notices..."

We'll Tell You When To Be Offended, Herman... - Ta-Nehisi Coates - National - The Atlantic: "...None of that, in the eyes of the conservatives who cheered him for those remarks, constituted "playing the race card." But when a man who is old enough to recall living under American apartheid gets a little emotional over a piece of land called "Niggerhead," that's where the right draws the line. Not just because Cain is attacking a fellow Republican, but because he stepped out of the proper role of a black conservative, which is to reassure Republicans that their political problems with race are the inventions of a liberal conspiracy. Cain just ran head first into the brick wall of conservative anti-anti-racism, the attitude on the right that accusations of racism directed at white people are of far greater consequence than any lingering vestiges of institutional racism nonwhites might face..."

As always, the liberals, and I count myself as one, manage to shoot their supporters in the feet by, among other things, referring to my district as "backwoods." Golly gee whillerkers, Ms.Mayer, we have cable and paved roads and all and we gets a lot of newsy things off those Internet toobs, so 'scuse some us for gettin' fooled by them there slick talking conservative frauds. I reckon no one else is this whole gol-durn country voted for Republicans in that there last big 'lection. Art Pope, Citizens United, and North Carolina Politics : The New Yorker:

Sunday, October 02, 2011

OccupyWallStreet: Theme Song « The Confluence: "We at The Confluence have always said that if you are not living off your investments, you are working class, regardless of your education, profession or delusions of grandeur. Tea Partiers amuse me when they pick on the next level down, as if the life of a Tea Partier counts to the bonus class. Tea Partiers don’t mean squat to them. They’re just useful idiots that distract the public while the bonus class plunders at will. If you are a Tea Partier, here’s news for you: The top 1% think YOU are a parasite who doesn’t deserve respect or a decent working wage. Yep, even if you are a hard working American, like I was until recently, you are just a ungrateful leech to them, sucking off their largess. They could replace you with somebody in China. And if the Chinese get uppity, there’s always Bangladesh..."

"..._The 1994 Republican revolution. The GOP ended four decades of House minority status when Newt Gingrich of Georgia led an insurgency that would change Congress' way of doing business.

"He greatly increased the party-versus-party polarization," Edwards said. Republicans saw their mission as "less to be a lawmaker than to be a champion of the Republican cause, constantly at war, defeating Democrats..."